


Fringe Elements

by allihearisradiogaga



Series: Fantastic as a Plausibility [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 90s aesthetics and puffy windbreakers in the pacific northwest, Bigfoot - Freeform, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Oneshot, Paranormal Investigators, Partners to Lovers, Rain, Zine, believer keith, cryptid, klance, skeptical lance, x-files au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-29 22:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17212106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allihearisradiogaga/pseuds/allihearisradiogaga
Summary: Agents Kogane and McClain go to the Pacific Northwest to investigate a possible cryptozoological sighting.





	Fringe Elements

**Author's Note:**

> I am so excited to finally share this fic with you all! I think I started work on it in March for the "This and Every Other Universe" Klance Edition zine, and after a ton of editing and rewriting, I came out with the fic I really wanted to have written! Then the zine... fell apart. And while I was super bummed that it didn't work out (because the creators all worked very hard to create some really great stuff, and I would highly recommend watching out for a possible pdf publication of the klance edition sometime in the future), I am still so glad that I got to work with the other creators and was able to create this fic.
> 
> This is a part of the same AU as my ongoing fic "Fantastic as a Plausibility," in which Keith and Lance are FBI agents assigned to the cases that no one else can explain. It's an X-Files AU, but you don't need to have seen the X-Files or have read my other fic in order to pick up on this oneshot! That being said, if you liked this fic, I have almost 50k (and growing) of the same AU also...
> 
> Thanks to my betas, @hobbit_hedgehog, @sheithkeef, and @aurora_chiroptera! I think there were a few others who took a look at this fic at various points of its development, but without the help of the betas on this one, it would have never come out, and it definitely would not have been as good as I think this is!

1

“I’m not sure what you plan to find in the Pacific Northwest that isn’t just  _ trees _ ,” said Lance, looking out into the dense fog and denser foliage that surrounded the rental SUV as it trundled up the old state highway.

Keith shifted his eyes to his partner and then back to the road.  His ill-kempt hair spilled over the collar of his brightly colored retro windbreaker.  “We’ve talked about what we’re looking for…”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Lance.  Then, as if reciting from a script: “There have been a rash of sudden livestock disappearances, large animals spotted on the highway at night, a few terrifying photographs—all pointing to a very interesting cryptozoological phenomenon.”

“Why do I feel like you’re not taking this seriously?”

Lance looked out the window, craned his neck upward.  The sky wasn’t visible—or maybe it was, but it was just that same drab gray as the fog that sifted itself through the dense forest growth.  He settled back into his seat. He glanced to Keith but then his eyes settled back on the road ahead of him, a burrowing tunnel of asphalt up a mountain of nothing but foliage.

“I’m not sure you really want me to answer that question.”  He shifted, and almost knocked the papers in his lap to the floor.  They were printed-out emails, mostly, detailing both directions and information about what exactly it was they were driving all the way out here to check out.  The descriptions of the beast and various locations where it had been spotted were shuffled out of order as he scrambled to pull them back into his grasp, and he looked back to the road.

“You watched the videos at least, right?” asked Keith, tone flat with irritation.

“Of course,” said Lance as he crossed his arms.  He might not buy into the claims this whole investigation was based on, but he was still a professional and he was going to do his job the way it was supposed to be done whether they were investigating a serial killing or… Bigfoot.

Lance thought back to those videos, which he had watched as a part of his due duty.  They were… interesting, to say the least, with the characters Lance was getting used to in this work:

“Hey there, welcome back!  I’m Rolo and this Nyma, as always, and we’re going out into the Adumbrate Woods today to investigate a local rumor.”  The man was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while and a well-pocketed vest. His prematurely-white, greasy hair swung against his face.  The woman next to him did not have the same grungy look—her makeup was flawlessly contoured, and though she was dressed for hiking, the Patagonia fleece and Lulu Lemon leggings indicated that she cared a little bit more about what she looked like on camera than her partner.  The video clip cut and the screen showed the shaky and verdant woods as the voice switched to voiceover.

“Over the past couple of months, there have been wild rumors that there’s been missing livestock—some sheep, some chickens, a pig or two—and that when driving through the Adumbrate Woods at night, people have seen a hulking figure of  _ something _ they can’t quite place.”

The camera cut again, and it was clear that Rolo was holding the camera up, selfie-style, for both him and Nyma to address the camera.  “This, of course, is a clear indication of that mythical cryptid I know  _ I’m _ excited to get a look at, the sasquatch himself, ol’ Bigfoot!”

Nyma held up a blurry photograph that was clearly taken while both the photographer and the subject of the photo were moving.  “This is a picture a viewer sent to us last week.” Her voice was less boisterous than her partner’s, but she was able to command the small screen with his presence all the same, and Lance couldn’t help but letting his gaze linger on her a little longer, even as Rolo began speaking again.

“As you can see, we already have the photographic evidence that Bigfoot does exist here in the Adumbrate Woods,” he said, pointing at the picture that Nyma held, “so we’re both pretty confident in finding what we can up here.  We’re headed out now to camp in the Adumbrate Woods for a few nights to see if we can find our big, furry friend.”

The next couple of minutes were taken up by narration and video clips of them setting up their campsite, putting together their “cryptozoological equipment,” and some bad riffing on Rolo’s part.  They then moved on to the nighttime stakeouts, which were exactly as Lance had expected. Shot in a lower-definition filter than the normal video quality of the rest of the video and in full night vision, the two of them stumbled around the woods and got shaky and blurry video of moving twigs and made a big deal of even the smallest sound.  All that they really found were a few squirrels and one hawk. The hawk was cool, but it was not the sasquatch they had promised.

It was in some footage of the third night of their camping trip that Keith had found what he then asked Lance to keep an eye out for.  Rolo was prattling on about something: “…and the scat of the bigfoot is different from, say, a moose or a bear, but will we find it? Well, does a sasquatch s--- in the woods?”  He laughed at his own joke, and then a twig snapped somewhere nearby. The camera whipped around to see what it might be. It was just Nyma, standing right behind Rolo, who was bending down to tie her shoe, but while she did look good, that was not what Lance was most interested in during this particular clip of the video.

What he was interested in was the blurry shape in the corner of the screen.  It was small, and if he didn’t know where to look for it, he would have missed it.  He paused the video and very carefully moved the cursor along the bottom bar of the video so that he could find just the right frame.  It was blurry, and it was discolored, and it was in that terrible night vision Rolo liked to use presumably because it made everything seem spooky.  But it was distinctly there, even if it wasn’t possible to tell exactly what “it” was.  
It was that blurry little figure that his partner claimed was actually the sasquatch.

 

2

They stood on the doorstep of the duplex and knocked on the door.  There was a beat-up old Volvo station wagon with a touch of rust at the rips, in the driveway, which told them they should expect a greeting at the door.  Lance looked to Keith, trying to get a read on what he was thinking, but had a hard time figuring out what was happening behind his dark eyes. Usually, it was pretty easy to read Keith, even though he tried to play himself off as dark and mysterious.  When he was frustrated, he was visibly so. When he was confused, it was clear to see as well as being particularly adorable. But now? He was serious enough, but a closed book.

The door opened and Lance immediately recognized the person from the video—Rolo, with a beanie pulled down over his eyes and some dirty sweatpants and very little else—as he answered the door.  “Hi, yeah?” he said, looking over the two men who had showed up at his doorstep.

“Hello, Rolo Blitzen?” asked Keith.  He held up his FBI badge. “I’m Agent Keith Kogane, and this is my partner, Agent Lance McClain.  We’re here to ask you a couple of questions.”

Rolo’s half-lidded eyes widened a little—as much as Lance supposed his mellow demeanor could create a look of surprise—and he stepped back, opening the door wider.  “Come on in, agents.”

Lance nodded and let Keith lead the way inside. They found themselves in a surprisingly neat little apartment living room, with a worn sofa, a low coffee table with a couple of soda cans on it, and a TV that was currently showing reruns of some 80s sitcom.  Rolo crossed the room and hit the button on the remote to turn off the TV. He turned to the agents, saying, “feel free to sit wherever,” before scrounging around until he found a hoodie to pull on. Both of the agents remained standing.

“Mr. Blitzen, we’re here—“

“Rolo’s fine, man.”

“Fine,” said Keith.  “ _ Rolo, _ we are here because of your recent video, and…”

“Oh, hell yeah,” said Rolo, grinning a wide smile that made Lance faintly uneasy.  “You guys fans?”

“No,” said Keith, at the same time Lance was saying, “Kogane is.”  Keith glared at him.

“That’s cool,” said Rolo, his expression unchanging.  “So, what about it?”

“Well, you and Ms. Zai—Nyma—recently published a video in which you searched for a sasquatch, yes?”

“Yeah, that was us,” said Rolo, grinning wider.

“How much did you know about the creature before you went into the Adumbrate Woods?” asked Keith.  Rolo raised an eyebrow, no doubt surprised by his serious tone.

“I mean,” he started. “I googled Bigfoot, yeah, and then I scanned through some cryptid sites, I guess.”  He paused, then seemed to realize he was talking to bigger guns than he was used to dealing with, and added: “A cryptid is a—”

“I know what a cryptid is,” said Keith, and he nodded toward Rolo.  “Go on.”

Rolo nodded.  “Yeah, so I pretty much checked out the basics so that we could make sure we made it look as real as possible for the fans.”

“…excuse me?”

“We had to make it look real,” said Rolo.  “There are people out there that actually believe in this stuff—I know, it seems far-fetched, but you wouldn’t believe what some people would believe.”  He chucked to himself. “So we had to make sure that we made it work with what was already, you know, out online and stuff.”

Lance shot a sideways glance at his partner, who didn’t seem to be fully reacting to the other man’s claim that this whole thing was a hoax, a fake for his YouTube channel.  After a moment, he saw Keith’s jaw unclench and realized that it was all that Keith could do to not react to Rolo’s comment. He decided it would be good if he stepped in.

“Mr. Blitzen,” said Lance, “I was hoping you could tell us a bit more about what happened on the third night of your Bigfoot video filming.”

“Oh,” said Rolo, “yeah, actually, those are all filmed on the same night.  We just switched sweatshirts to make it seem like time had passed. But we—wait.”  He looked them up and down again, taking particular note of Keith’s incredibly serious and stoic expression.  “Did something happen? Did someone die, or…?”

“No,” said Lance.  “I’m sorry, I feel like we’ve just wasted your time.”

For the first time, a bout of confusion on Rolo’s face.  Lance glanced to Keith, who was still silently—and hopefully to Rolo, imperceptibly—seething.  “No, thanks, I guess, but, uh—what  _ are _ you guys investigating?”

Keith opened his mouth to reply, but Lance was quicker.  “In the background of one of your videos, we saw a nearly mature cannabis plant, and we thought it might be an indicator of a larger illegal farm that has been supplying people around here illegally for a while.”  He paused, not looking to see if Keith would go along with the lie or not. “So we were hoping you would show us where exactly you filmed that video so that we could…” He paused, realizing that he could catch a faint but distinctive skunkish smell from the room around him even as he spoke.  “…make sure that the people doing this will be taken care of.”

“Uh,” said Rolo, glancing around, trying to make eye contact with anything but the two FBI agents.   “Oh, here, I’ll…” He shuffled off to the other room, and Lance could see him through the doorway sifting through a pile of papers on a desk.

Lance looked to his partner and raised an eyebrow.  Keith waved him away. Lance couldn’t help but grin.  He knew that it bothered Keith, the flippant way that Rolo had dismissed most of what he worked for, but Lance could safely admit to himself that it was utterly hilarious to him.  The way Keith got frustrated, the pink in his cheeks—it was cute.

Before Rolo rejoined them, someone else entered the room from further back in the apartment.  She hesitated in the doorway for a moment before approaching the agents.

“Hello,” said Lance, recognizing her immediately from the YouTube video.  “Nyma Zai, yes?”

She nodded demurely.  “And you are?” she asked, her crop-top and high waisted jeans matching with some extravagant eye makeup that was much more of an effortful casual look than Rolo’s.

They went through the standard FBI agent introduction, made up of a fumble for the badge, a flash of said badge, and a sheepish smile followed by an audible delivery of the name.  She nodded in response.

“So, Ms. Zai, we were hoping that…”

“Nyma’s fine,” she said, then grinned with a smile that made Lance’s knees admittedly a little weak.  He could feel his proximity to his partner, feeling a little guilty at the near-lecherous gaze.

“ _ Nyma _ ,” continued Keith, “we were hoping that Mr. Blitzen and yourself would be interested in bringing us to the location of your bigfoot video.  We are investigating a possible cannabis farm, and…”

She narrowed her eyes, but nodded.  She looked back to Rolo. He shrugged, and stepped forward.  “Sure,” he said. “We’ll show you.” His voice said that it was not a big deal, that it would be an easy errand, but Nyma’s last-moment glance conveyed more than that—something akin to suspicion, perhaps?

 

3

An hour later, they had checked into a motel and Keith was hanging up his blazer in the closet.  Judging by the overcast look in the sky—one that the woman at the front desk of the motel had said would continue to persevere throughout their stay—he would be wearing his brightly-colored windbreaker for the rest of their investigation here.  Lance was sitting on the bed, pawing through the files again.

“Do you trust them?” asked Keith, turning back from the closet and sitting next to Lance on the edge of the bed.  A little closer, Lance noticed, than he would have sat a few months ago. But they’d grown together a bit since they’d first been assigned to be partners and they had gotten to know each other.

“Rolo and Nyma?”  He looked down at the files.  “I’m not sure. They’re both pretty hard to place.”

Keith shook his head.  “I don’t trust either of them.  There’s something there that just… I don’t know.  Rubs me the wrong way.”

“Do people actually watch these videos?” asked Lance, handing him a paper that had a printed out screenshot of the moment where Keith had claimed to see a potential sasquatch.

Keith let out a sound of disgust.  “Sadly.” He squinted at the picture again before putting it to the side.  “It gives the real cryptozoologists a bad name.”

“I don’t know, Nyma seemed…”  Lance stopped talking when he saw Keith’s eyes narrow, and he let out a slight sigh.   “I mean, I want to trust them until we can’t.”

“Why?” asked Keith.

“I…”  Lance dropped off.  He knew why—because Nyma’s smile had felt really good when it’d been directed at him—but he wasn’t about to admit that.  “I just want to be fair.”

“Well then,” said Keith, “I guess we can be fair and take turns with the bed?”  He gestured to the double-sized bed in the center of the room. Then, he pointed to the recliner in the corner, by the door.  “I’ll take it first.” He paused, then, a twinge building on the corner of his mouth, “Dibs.”

Lance couldn’t be too indignant, because Keith had just used a colloquialism in a more or less correct way, and that was a small victory, if anything.  He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done to get on his bad side, but he did know he felt the absence of his partner’s warmth when he got up again to head to the bathroom.  He looked back at the files again and nodded. He had to be ready to start the investigation. He had to be ready.

 

4

The next morning, the truck pulled up onto the old logging road and really bounced around through the mud.  The four of them were sitting across the bench seat in the pickup, Rolo at the wheel with Nyma beside him, Lance then wedged in between her and Keith.  In an effort to give the lady as much space as she needed, Lance had really pushed Keith up against the door. He was looking out of the window and seemed to be trying to ignore the rest of them as they made their way out into the northwestern forest.

“This is where we parked, right ahead,” said Rolo, nodding forward but not taking his hands off of the wheel and shifter.  He downshifted and rolled to a stop in the small clearing and stepped out of the truck. The trees barely let any light in, because even though the trees reached high above them, the canopy was thick.  The sky was looking pretty gray above the canopy, anyway. Keith basically tumbled out of the door, and Lance more slowly came behind him, straightening himself out as he stepped into the mud outside.

“We hiked in from here,” said Rolo, already standing near the start of a hiking trail that lead off from the small clearing.  “And I know we’re not technically supposed to be parking out here, but I figure with two  _ federal agents… _ ”

“You’ll be covered,” said Keith flatly.

Rolo nodded.  “Nice. So, yeah, we started out here and mostly stuck to the trail until we needed some footage in the ‘wilderness,’ when we didn’t really leave the trail much at all.  Except…” He trailed off.

“Except?” asked Keith.

“Except when we camped.”  He paused, holding up his hands.  “I know it’s against the rules, but if it makes you feel any better about wandering out with us rule breakers, it was only one night.”

Nyma shot him a stern look at this point, but he didn’t seem to notice.  “I mean, the video says we were out here for a couple of weeks, but we don’t really need to stay out that long to create the illusion for our viewers, you know?  They’re pretty gullible to begin with.”

Lance could see that Keith was absolutely glowering at this comment, and he decided to step in instead of seeing Rolo continue to dig a hole for himself.  “Let’s get going, then,” he said, his hand briefly alighting on Keith’s shoulder, beckoning him forward. Though reluctantly, Keith let himself be led onward.  “Nyma, why don’t you lead the way? And I would  _ love  _ to hear your perspective on the region…”

His banter trailed off into the same babble it did every time he found himself in the company of a beautiful young woman, and Keith followed in near-silence behind, following Rolo through the verdant forest.  The underbrush, made up mainly of thick ferns, slapped wetly against his shins, and the low-hanging branches that tugged at his shoulders made him glad that he was wearing a windbreaker that would repel the water that clung to those leaves.  It was rather pretty, in a gloomy kind of way.

They walked in this way for a couple of hours, during which they only made a couple of stops to drink some of the water they’d brought with them.  There wasn’t really any discussion of any consequence until they reached the point where Rolo said he was pretty sure they had departed from the trail.  There was a rather large white oak that seemed out of place in the mainly pine forest, and that was the marker they used to understand where they needed to come back to the trail after they departed.

Rolo took the lead at this point, slightly more confident in his memory of the specific trip they had made in order to make the bigfoot video, and the rest of them followed pretty closely behind, not wanting to lose sight of each other.  A slight rain began to break from the thick clouds that always seemed to pervade the skies. There was less underbrush as they moved further out, slightly uphill from where they had left the trail. Lance only asked “are we getting close?” once, and was only shut down because Nyma had responded with something clever in a seductive voice that Lance hoped was too low for Keith to hear.  For a reason he couldn’t explain or wasn’t ready to try to explain, he felt himself flush.

“It was somewhere around here,” said Rolo, stopping and pushing his long white hair out of his face.  “I’m not sure exactly, but I am pretty sure…”

“There,” said Keith, pointing to a distinctive rock that rose about four feet high out of the ground.  “That was in the background of your video, midway through.”

“Oh, I…” began Rolo, trying to place the memory himself, but Keith pushed past him to rock; he clearly didn’t need Rolo to confirm.

“Yeah,” said Keith, continuing without acknowledging Rolo’s attempt at a contribution at all.  “Over here, we can see the remains of a campfire…” He kicked at the semi-covered char circle a little to the right of the rock.  “Which is illegal in this state forest, but I don’t think that’s the biggest of our worries.” Lance could hear an audible sigh of relief from Rolo.

“Over there,” said Lance, pointing past Keith to the woods on the other side of the rock.  He had looked at the screenshots of that video enough to be able to piece together enough of a map in his head that he could tell for sure, that was the area in which the bigfoot itself had been filmed.  It was just out of the small clearing where the camp had been. The rock had been visible in the far left of the video. The videographers had done a good job of making sure that their tents were not visible in the shot, but that lumpy piece of metamorphic rock that must have been left behind by the last glacial event was not one to be remade or recreated. It was pretty obvious that this was as far as the two had gone in order to shoot more of their sensational video.

Nyma scoped the place out and looked just past where Keith was standing and shook her head.  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “but that just seems like a whole lot of Lady’s Fern and not at all like weed.”

Lance wasn’t sure what she was talking about for a moment before he remembered: their cover story.  “Oh, well…”

“And correct me if I’m wrong,” she continued, “but it’s not common for the federal government to get involved in small-town pot violations anyway, especially in a state where it’s legal for a person to grow and smoke recreationally.”

“In small quantities…” began Lance, but he was cut off again.

“Which is why I’m led to think that maybe the two of you aren’t here to just investigate a small-town pot farm,” she said, her voice even as she narrowed her eyes.  “Tell me, Agents Kogane and McClain, what exactly are you here to investigate?”

Lance was at a loss for words.  He had hoped neither of them would think that their cover was anything but genuine, and yet here she was, poking holes in their defense.  And now? They had none. He took a step away from her, closer to Keith—closer to safety. How long had she suspected them and lead them on?

“Excuse me, Ms. Zai, we are…” began Keith, but he couldn’t even figure out what to say from there on.

“I think that you can find your own way back to town,” said Rolo, stepping forward next to his defiant partner.  “And  _ Agents _ , if you really even  _ are _ agents, you had best not start blabbing about our production process online.  We have a respectable business.”

Nyma continued to glare at them and turned on her heels to follow her partner out of their sight and back toward the trail.

“Wait a minute—”  Keith tried to break in again, but Nyma had already led Rolo away, who had seemed more amused than angry as they slipped back into the woods.

Lance put his hand on Keith’s shoulder.  “They weren’t going to—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Keith, “they just…”  He seethed with an attitude that indicated to Lance that it did, in fact, matter.  He pulled his hand back from his partner’s shoulder and looked around them.

“Well…” said Lance, hardly believing that he was about to suggest what he was.  “We’re here already. Why don’t we look around? I mean, this matches the video, right?”

Keith was silent for a moment before looking around them, then pulling out the printed-out screenshot he’d folded into his left breast pocket of his bright windbreaker. That ridiculous thing that Keith had no business making look that good. After a moment of comparison, he nodded.  “They were telling the truth about that, at least,” he said.

Lance nodded and followed behind Keith for a moment or two as Keith picked through the underbrush, but then realized something important.

“Wait,” he said, “what exactly am I looking for?”

Keith sighed, stopping and turning toward his partner.  “Footprints, scat, broken underbrush, foul odor— _ duh _ .”

As Keith turned back around to continue his search, Lance raised an incredulous eyebrow, ready to make a snarky comment about how  _ no, _ that wasn’t something to say “duh” to, because most people don’t know what to look for when searching for bigfoot because he isn’t real…

But then he realized that he actually found it pretty endearing that Keith would know that stuff, that he would put the time and energy into learning what other people wouldn't normally spend time on, that he had his own thing to care about…

And Lance shook his head, clearing his thoughts of that, and tried to look for bigfoot prints, hoping he’d find those, if there even was such a thing, rather than  _ any _ type of scat—bigfoot or otherwise.  Plus, he could imagine Keith’s face if they  _ did  _ actually find something, and that hypothetical smile seemed more than worth a wild goose chase..

After a few minutes of this, they had widened their search to include the surrounding areas.  While Keith was looking at trees to see if there was any sort of scratching or markings that he claimed might be indicative of territory marking or mating rituals—something Lance didn’t even want to begin to think about—Lance looked around some low-lying ferns for evidence of disturbances, still not completely sure what he was looking for.

After a few more minutes of aimlessly brushing ferns aside to see what was underneath and seeing nothing, Lance felt a thick droplet off water splash down against the back of his neck.  He turned to look up to see where it came from, was was met with another thick globule of water directly in his left eye. “Ah!’ he exclaimed as he tried to blink the water out of his eye.  Keith turned back to him.

“Lance, what—”  He was cut off as he felt the rain dripping through the trees as well.

“Should we head back or…”

“No,” said Keith.  He turned up the collar of his windbreaker.  “We don’t know how to get back out here without Rolo and Nyma.  So have to see if we can find something before we have to figure out how to leave… Plus, the rain might wash away evidence.”

Lance nodded, and the rain began to fall a bit steadier.  Nothing too bad, but the way that the droplets collected on the leaves of the canopy above before dropping down led them to collect into larger globs before splashing onto the two FBI agents.  Lance brushed the ferns to the side, and they stuck to his hands now that they were starting to get wet.

“Hey—I think I found—!” said Keith, getting cut off as a thunderclap boomed through the sky.  There was a faint flash at the same time, but the trees obscured most of its light. Almost as if in sync with the sound, the rain began to move from an innocent rainfall to a full on torrent.  Keith was yelling, though, so Lance could hear him over the sound of the pounding rain.

“No!  No!” shouted Keith, but Lance ran to him and grabbed his hand, pulling him back toward where he thought the trail was.  Keith wouldn’t let himself be pulled at first, until there was another faint flash followed by an even louder thunderclap, which brought with it a whoosh of wind and even more rain.  He relented and let himself be led away.

The rain was making its way right past the leaves above at this point, making it hard to see, and was puddling on the ground, sliding off of the slick underbrush to make a muddy surface. Lance turned around a large white oak that he  _ thought _ looked like the tree they’d passed on the way in, and as he did instead of finding the trail he found himself tripping and sliding down a hillside, slipping over the slick detritus of the forest floor. Keith, who was just behind him, let out a yelp as he slid down after his partner. They tumbled into one another before they both stopped at the bottom of the hill, Keith draped over Lance’s legs. They made a quick, embarrassed eye contact and looked away immediately, and they both got to their feet.

As they did, the sky opened up above them even more, and the rain fell as if dumped from a giant bucket.

“Over there!” shouted Keith, pointing at the exposed roots of a gargantuan fallen hardwood. The roots intertwined to create a small cavernous spot, just enough shelter for them to seek. They scrambled under the overhanging roots and pressed their backs back against the bottom of the tree, gasping for breath in the humid air.

Lance leaned back against the cool dirt of the culvert and was thankful for the root ball that arched over them, protecting them from the storm.  The rain was spitting at this point, but they were enclosed just enough that they didn’t get soaked; the most they felt were some splatters as the angry drops ricocheted off of the fallen leaves and needles around the enclosure and left tiny dark spots on their pant legs.

Once he had gotten himself comfortable in the space, he noticed one important detail: there was barely room for two people in here.  He was intensely aware of Keith’s proximity, and it didn’t help that the rain brought with it a chill to the damp air.

Lance could feel the faint shiver as it ran through his partner.  “You’re cold,” he said. “Here…”

He put his arm carefully around Keith’s shoulder, pulling him closer as he did.

“Thanks,” murmured Keith.  He looked away, but despite this he adjusted his body slightly so that he was more comfortably resting in the crook of Lance’s arm.

They sat without saying anything for a moment, though it was far from silent—the rain made a cacophony of sound that paired with the rustle of the living forest all around them, huddled under the roots of a dead tree.

“Is there…” began Lance, but he was cut off as Keith started talking at the same time.

“There was a print.”

“A—what, a bigfoot print?”

“Yeah,” said Keith.  He turned his head toward Lance, and Lance was  _ very _ conscious of how close their faces were.  “I saw it there on the ground, and then the rain started, and…”  He shook his head and let it fall back against Lance’s shoulder. “It’s gone now.  This rain is turning all of the dirt in this forest to mush.” He sighed. “We were so close.”

“It’ll be okay,” said Lance.  “I mean, if you found that one, there has to be more.”  He paused, and thinking, continued, “plus, if there’s fresh mud, there’s a chance for fresh tracks, right?”

“Yeah,” said Keith, “I guess, but…”  He raised an eyebrow. “Wait, why are you even suggesting that?  You don’t believe me.”

“I…”  Lance stopped.  “I don’t believe you  _ yet _ .  But I believe that you found a print in the mud, and I believe that it would be foolish for me to… rule out your hypothesis until it’s tested.”

“You believe.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We’ll see what happens when I find that print tomorrow.”

“Hm,” said Lance.  “And what until then?”

Keith made a sideways glance toward the rain that continued to downpour outside.

“Don’t answer that,” said Lance.  “Because I—”

Before he could continue, Keith answered his question, closing the distance between them and planting his lips on his partner’s.  He wrapped his arms around him, and Lance found himself surprised for just the briefest of moments before closing his arm around Keith’s shoulders the rest of the way and pulling him in closer.  Lance closed his eyes and breathed in the petrichor mixed with Keith’s cheap 2-in-1 shampoo, hearing Keith’s breathing and the patter of the heavy drops, and feeling not the cool of the air but the heat of Keith’s body.

And suddenly, Keith was no longer holding him, Keith was pushing him down so that he could sit up straighter, looking out from under some of the dangling roots.

“What…?” started Lance, but Keith just pointed out from underneath, and the shadow of something disappearing into the forest.

“That was… it was  _ him _ …” whispered Keith, pressing his hands down onto Lance’s chest to see if he could crane his neck so that he could get a better view.  Between the heavy rain and the trees that obscured the creature, it had slipped out of view.

Lance heard what Keith said, but rather than responding, he put his hand on his partner’s shoulder and pulled him backward—with resistance at first, but then he allowed himself to be pulled—letting Keith to settle back into the crook of his arm again. He was still agitated, eyes wide and darting around for another glimpse of the creature, but there was no further appearance, at least that they could see. Lance found that he didn’t even care whether or not the Bigfoot was real or not, in the end. There was only one thing they found out in the Adumbrate Woods that he really cared about. And he felt it in their shared warmth as the rain isolated them in that root ball.

 

5

Lance leaned back in his chair at his desk back at the bureau.  Keith had already left for the day, which was both a blessing and a curse—communication between the two since they’d left the Pacific Northwest had been a mess of awkward glances and short, curt sentences due to them both having the total inability to properly express themselves.  That being said, their hands had entwined on the flight back, and neither of them had pulled away…

Lance shook his head gently and looked back to the screen, where he was finishing up his report.  When he finished it, he could head home. Would he give Keith a call? He couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t sure of what Keith felt, even though he initiated the kiss, and he wasn’t sure of what could be trusted.  That was what Keith taught him, really—and was it just a one-time flirtation, or was it something real? He glanced to Keith’s almost-bare desk, with only his powered-down computer and a small file with the details from their most recent investigation.  Lance sighed. Keith was hard to read, that was for sure. He could only trust in what he knew, and he knew it was real to him, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions in regards to Keith.

He put his hands back to the keys.

> … in place.  There was something in the woods, and Agent Kogane’s theorizes that is it something paranatural in origin.  The current observations cannot fully confirm or deny his theories. However, despite what one can or cannot trust about what there really is going on in those woods, it is clear that there are certain fringe elements that no one can trust or know in the world—and maybe we never will.

**Author's Note:**

> Scully: Why would somebody want to sabotage the Space Shuttle?  
> Mulder: Well, if you were a terrorist, there probably isn't a more potent symbol of American progress and prosperity. And if you're an opponent of big science, NASA itself represents a vast money trench that exists outside the crucible and debate of the democratic process. And of course there are those futurists who believe the Space Shuttle is a rusty old bucket that should be mothballed. A dinosaur spacecraft built in the 70's by scientists setting their sights on space in an ever declining scale.  
> Scully: And we thought we could rest easy with the fall of the Soviet Union.  
> Mulder: Not to mention certain fringe elements who accuse our government itself of space sabotage. The failure of the Hubble Telescope and the Mars Observer are directly connected to a conspiracy to deny us evidence.  
> Scully: Evidence of what?  
> Mulder: Alien civilization.  
> Scully: Oh. Of course. (s1ep8: Space)


End file.
